Deacon Sports Xtra: Lowder, Wake Forest Baseball Embracing One Day at a Time Mentality
3/8/2023 10:12:00 AM | Baseball, Les Johns
“It’s fun to reflect on that, but it’s in the past. We’re all looking forward to this year. It would be a disgrace to still be praising last year when we have such a talented team here now. We have an opportunity to do something far greater than anything I accomplished last year.”
The 2023 Wake Forest Baseball season has begun, so that now means every Friday for the foreseeable future will be "Lowder Day," as the reigning ACC Pitcher of the Year anchors a dangerous Demon Deacon collection of pitchers determined to take the team deep into the postseason.
For optimal success this season, Lowder wants to remember the disappointment of last season's finish, forget about his personal accomplishments and embrace the lofty expectations thrust upon his team during the offseason — not an easy juggling act.
Lowder went 11-3 with a 3.08 ERA a season ago, striking out 105 batters in 99.1 innings of work for the Deacs, becoming the first Wake Forest player to win ACC Pitcher of the Year.
"It's fun to reflect on that, but it's in the past," Lowder said. "We're all looking forward to this year. It would be a disgrace to still be praising last year when we have such a talented team here now. We have an opportunity to do something far greater than anything I accomplished last year."
After the season, Lowder competed with Team USA, and then he was shut down during the fall.
"Me, Brock (Wilken) and Teddy (McGraw) were part of Team USA, then me and Teddy went overseas," he said. "That was the extent of throwing for me this summer after a pretty long year. When we got back in the fall, me and Teddy were kind of on the same schedule. We start the fall season a little bit earlier than other schools, and we didn't want to feel like we were rushing in terms of our workload getting ready for the season.
"So we went with an alternate plan of shutting down for a little bit longer and then building up, with emphasis in the weight room and long tossing. We threw some live toward the back end of the fall. We were in the same program, so we were able to push each other day-in and day-out. We also found a way to lead and try to win without being on the field."
Wake Forest coach Tom Walter talked extensively about the huge jumps made by fellow Demon Deacon arms, admitting that Lowder "didn't have as big of a jump to make."
"I've worked on a few things here and there, like pitches and stuff like that," Lowder said. "But that wasn't my main area of focus. I didn't want to change too much. But each year you get another year of experience under your belt. That is more valuable than any pitch you can add or any metric you can look at. The extra year of experience will be the biggest benefit for a majority of our team.
"It was for me coming from my freshman season to sophomore year. You're more mature and experienced. I've been through both the bad and the good, so I feel like I've got a good handle on what will be thrown at me."
As always, the state-of-the-art Wake Forest pitching lab was a huge tool available for Lowder to utilize over the offseason.
"We've done a lot of work in the lab, but it wasn't anything major," he said. "I just wanted to see some numbers on the slider to make it a little harder. Nothing crazy and nothing you'll notice from the stands. But there's a bunch of different ways to get better in this game."
The Deacs entered the season as a consensus top-10 selection nationally and one of the top choices to win the ACC. Generally speaking, the team has embraced the expectations, which were next to impossible to avoid even if they wanted.
"We all have team expectations and personal expectations," Lowder said. "I've talked to Walt (Wake Forest coach Tom Walter) and some of the other guys about it. It's not something we're going to run away from. Everybody knows what we're expected to do. But it's the same game we've all played for so many years. I just want to go out there and have fun. Expectations are expectations, but we can come back to the relationships on the team and just focus on winning.
"You don't want to give too much attention to it, but you also don't want to act like it's not there. Lying to yourself doesn't do much good. Paying too much attention to it will just lead you down the wrong path. Just try to talk about it and deal with it maturely. Don't lie to yourself and say you don't care about it. That won't do much good either."
In three starts this season, Lowder is 3-0 with a .47 ERA in 19 innings, highlighted by back-to-back scoreless outings. The 2022 ACC Pitcher of the Year has allowed just one earned run and has walked just two batters to go along with 26 strikeouts.
In Wake Forest's win over Binghamton, Lowder retired 16-straight batters, including a series of three-up, three-down innings. In the top of the fifth inning, Lowder tallied his seventh strikeout of the contest which marked the 200th strikeout of his Demon Deacon career. The strikeout completed an immaculate inning by the right hander.
